The Finance Ministry is attempting to stop the Greek State‘s lawsuits against private land owners in order to deal with a wave of claims that is expected to peak in the coming months as the country’s cadastral survey is completed.

In a legislative initiative to come in the next few months, Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis, announced yesterday the freezing for six months of any new lawsuit by the ministry’s land departments as well as a halt on lawsuits filed until the legislative initiative is completed.

The Public Sector has been claiming for several years the property of thousands of citizens in Greece with documents even dating back to the Turkish occupation, Hatzidakis said yesterday. But the battle has flared up because of the completion of the Cadastral Registry and the expiration of deadlines for filing lawsuits to correct the first cadastral records.

As the Finance Minister said yesterday, until recently, the public claimed the entire town of Saronida and until a few months ago the center of Karditsa! A similar case, according to the Deputy Minister of Digital Governance, Konstantinos Kyranakis, was also in the area of Grammos. There, the State claimed after 102 long years an area of land of a private person who lived and paid taxes, citing documents of the Turkish occupation that even the Supreme Court has rejected!

In the Directorate of Forests of Cyclades alone, which includes Milos, Kimolos, half of Mykonos (i.e. the Municipality of Mykonos), Syros and Sifnos, the Greek State has taken action against private individuals with over 250 lawsuits.

Whatever was green on the forest maps the forestry services are obliged to recognize it as forest and proceed with a recommendation to the State Legal Council for a lawsuit in favor of the Greek State, say competent officials of the forestry directorates. Similar problems are found throughout the country where the major pathologies of the Greek state exist and in areas of intense residential pressure. These include Attica, coastal areas, the islands and Chalkidiki.

A similar case in the Attica basin is the Korydallos – Nikaia area in Pikilon Oros. There too, the Greek State, through the State Legal Council, has brought lawsuits for a total area of up to 1,800 acres in an off-planned area, which the State claims as a forest. The alleged owners claim that they have property titles dating back to the mid-17th century, noting that they have been recognized by the Hellenic Cadastre since 2003.

“The owners are being asked to suffer hardship and prove before the courts the obvious, namely that their properties are indeed theirs,” Hatzidakis said yesterday. Mr Kyranakis is on the same wavelength. As he points out in protothema.gr, in 2023, 72% of the appeals brought by the state against citizens involved real estate and lost.

The upcoming regulation should do justice to citizens who have property titles. Because the State even if they don’t have titles, they are relying on expropriations that have not been done and documents during the Turkish occupation causing a lot of confusion to people. “The State should stop claiming property by invoking Ottoman Law.” The problem, the deputy minister says, is about to intensify as the Cadastre will be completed in 2025 after 30 years and from then until the end of 2026 there will be a rain of lawsuits to claim assets even for areas where the Cadastre has been closed. Which means that in 2026 there will be a major clean-up.

Background

According to the Ministry of Digital Governance, the issue has been on the state’s mind for six months and there was even a consultation in the latest law 5142/2024 on the cadastre with a provision that was ultimately not passed whereby the state would not have to claim properties on which it has no title.

According to Kyranakis, the Finance Ministry understood the seriousness of the issue and decided to move forward with legislation to set limits on what the state has and does not have the right to do.

In a post on social media yesterday, Kyranakis noted that:

1) In the Unknown Owner cases, a citizen does not need to file a lawsuit to claim his property, he can correct it at the Land Registry by presenting his legal title through the manifest error procedure. This applies even if he has never declared it in the previous decades.

2) Forestry: When the citizen is vindicated by the objection committee and has a decertification decision in his hands, but in the cadastre the property still appears as “Public” due to its alleged forest character, the correction is again done in the same way.

The requirement to file a lawsuit as was the case under the laws of previous governments has been abolished, and now the owner applies to the Land Registry for correction of a manifest error so that his property can be formally returned to him.

3) Under the amendment of the Ministry of Finance, for 6 months, until September 30, 2025, no new lawsuits will be filed by the Land Registry of the Ministry of Finance. And for lawsuits already filed, the progress of the proceedings will be temporarily halted.